What’s up freaks it’s time for a new project pog champ! I start projects like starting projects is going out of style so get used to it.

What Misery Hath Thou Wrought This Time?

Thanks for asking! It’s always lovely to be appreciated.

I have developed an obsession by proxy with Kamen Rider. For those unfamiliar it is by my estimation currently the media most popular in Japan that has not yet made escape velocity to america the way anime has. It’s much more popular cousin Power Rangers however has made it over here. While it isn’t the same, it is similar. Imaging plucky good looking younger characters acting over-dramatically before doing action scenes in suits loosely themed around fruit, space, mirrors, music, sweets or dead people, strung together (loosely at first, then as time went on more seriously) by a plot against an evil in the world in a show that has been going on since the 70s.

I don’t have a full breakdown on where you should start with kamen rider, but my personal favorites are in no particular order Kuuga, Ryuki, Gaim, and Gavv, though Black is also good and critical viewing for Kamen Rider Black Sun (the gritty reboot), and Shin Kamen Rider slaps but that’s a movie made by Hideaki Ano, so it doesn’t count.

All of it is Campy Melodramatic fun and that’s all one can really ask for from a show where a bug guy gets in a funny suit and does a big kick.

So, my brain decided:

Yo, what if we made this into a Tabletop minis game

As someone who’s got a degree in game design this is unfortunately the natural path that my brain takes whenever I encounter something I like for a long enough time period. To the well adjusted mind this seems sick and unhealthy, and it probably is, yet I bear this curse with dignity and grace.

Thus, Henshin Fighters was conceived.

Henshin Fighters is the working (and now that I’ve published this, probably the final) title of my Kamen Rider homage miniature skirmish game. Now dear captive reader, behold, my loosely filtered thoughts and opinions on the design of the game.

Things I Wanted

As with many things in life I have very specific and calculated Opinions on how a game should be that found there way into this game.

Hexagons (They’re the Bestagons)

The first of which was that the game should be played on hexagons. Hexagons have the benefit of removing ambiguity in measuring. None of the fiddly “how many inches away…” or accidental cheating that goes on in a lot of games with free-form movement where you move a guy six and a quarter inches instead of six. I thought about squares but then you get into the classic problem of how long is a diagonal and can you attack across diagonals etc etc. my goal is to reduce fiddlyness so the hexagon was chosen.

Random In > Random Out

My other goal was to reduce output randomness. Recently I played cursebreaker by Sean Sutter and it was a blast, so i did what all good designers did and stole.. er… borrowed from him. In the game you roll a handful of dice at the start and that’s what you can do on your turn. This changes the game from “i hope I make this hail mary charge” and a game that can often come down to dice rolling into a puzzle to solve. In my estimation, not everyone will like this change, but I think it’s fun, and I’m writing the game so unless you’re playtesting it with me you don’t have to like it.

What Kamen Rider Needed

As with anything that is in the homage or genre space there are some elements that must appear for it to feel right. These come in two flavors, the most obvious of which are the aesthetic elements. There are certain surface level details that have to be right in order for something to fit in. You don’t go to a sci fi story to hear about elves and dragons at least not without the twist that they’re aliens. Then there are the deeper elements things that fans even subconsciously resonate with in the genre works. A grimdark reader wants to want a happy ending but doesn’t actually want to get it. So what does Kamen Rider need?

Henshin!

It’s in the name, so it had to be there. Riders have to transform. The transformation is arguably the bones of the series. Characters change from who they are into something more fantastic and powerful to take on threats that we could not as humans. They are always heroes, but the mask makes them Kamen Riders.

Transforming does provide a mechanical difficulty on the tabletop though. do you need minis for every form? do you need unique rules for each hero and their forms?

We can think about minis later, for now, lets focus on the rules. To my estimation each hero should have something unique to them that makes them who they are, and then each form augments their abilities. Then we use a system of affinity or allegiance to limit which heroes take which form. More details on how this exactly works as I nail it down but the idea is enough to run with to make a playtest packet.

A Big Kick

This is another thing they do in kamen rider that has to be here. These tend to be fight ending finishers that the riders do to close out an episode. So we know there’s an accumulation of resources and near the end game a fighter can spend those resources to do a big kick. The trick is going to be making it feel big without making it something you can send downrange all whilly nilly. It should feel climactic.

Heroes all

Kamen Riders rarely die and when they do it’s a big deal. Most of the time when a rider is beaten they crawl away, lick their wounds maybe get a pep talk and then they’re back in it. As such Henshin Fighters also shouldn’t really die. This presents a problem in that I want the game to atill feel kinetic. Part of this can be with throwing minis around and trying to manage other stats, but the fact will remain that I don’t like games where a model can’t get exploded. So instead we’ll have to model the defeat. Riders take a breather, lick their wounds and get back in the fight. This also allows for the heroic value of getting hit with something that should by all rights take you out of the fight and getting up anyways.

Now one may think that if the game is about playing kamen riders and they are the heroic protagonist why are they fighting against each other? The thing is Riders fight all the time. Be it misunderstanding or the premise of the show it is often the case that our masked heroes have to take on each other with the same ferocity they must use against their enemies.

Okay windbag, what about the game?

Fair enough! I’m including a link to a playtest packet. The goal is that it should be easy enough to read and pick up on its own; however, this is the very first draft of the game. It is rough, I haven’t figured out the balance. I’m doing a little bit of gambling on what is and isn’t over and under powered. This is also not complete. I designed enough to get it on the table and not much more. I have ideas on how to fill the game out, but I don’t know if what I’ve got is any good yet.

Toodles and thanks for reading this far!